Jayu
by TeaC0sy
Summary: AU. Hwoarang is a North Korean soldier in training... fighting against his own Beloved Nation. Just how far can ambition and anti-patriotism take someone?
1. Chapter 1

**Awrite, I'm back to posting (kinda) with something that I've been wanting to do for YONKS, but have never actually gotten around to doing due to a number of *mumble* Anyway. Updates will be the slowest you've ever dared to imagine. **

**There happens to be someone on the site known by 'teh awesum' - or otherwise 'Razer Athane' - and even though it won't be much without her input (t'was gonna be a co-op, but alas I shall murder anything good that could have possibly come out of this idea), every word of this is dedicated to her. Because she's just awesome like that. OH! It's also her birthday. Go wish her a good one :)**

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**I**

_Five minutes. _

My eyes begin to tense. My head, positioned stiffly straight ahead, does not move even the slightest bit to the right to better aid my vision. I strain for a while longer to watch the slow movement of the hands on my neighbour's wristwatch. I already realise how blighted my vision will be once I look forward again, but I do not move. I am not allowed to.

The night's dead silence envelopes myself and the tens of other men standing in the vicinity. It sickens me, both mentally and physically. Silence. It keeps us in our confines, it disables our creativity. Humans weren't made without vocal chords to speak.

_Four minutes. _

I chose now to snap my eyes shut and bring them forward; they really hurt, and I don't want to risk being found out for impatience, impudence, impertinence or whatever else they can drag out from nowhere to make my life just that much more pitiful.

As I look straight ahead my eyes meet the nameless, expressionless faces of the soldiers before me. They may as well be statues draped in official uniform. If they ever talked, they could speak of their true feelings. If only they were to move, they could look proud, patriotic. But they don't.

Humans weren't made without nerves to move.

_Three minutes. _

One hundred and eighty seconds and I'll age a full year. Seems pathetic really, that so much life can be added to an existence, especially when you know first-hand how all of it can be taken away in exactly the same amount of time.

You see, such an incident occurred not a week ago. Having lived in the same house since their marriage, my parents settled down and had two children, me the eldest. And despite how much they hated it here, they understood early on that moving away would be futile. Fatal, even.

In any case, they had become as comfortable in their home as could be expected under the circumstances. Our neighbours were friendly. They had one son, my senior by a year, who went by the name Jae Hwa. And to cut a gruelling story short, word of Jae Hwa's father and his open opinions of our Dear Leader travelled to unwanted ears. Fidelity personified, was Jae Hwa, and whether or not that was a good thing... well, while I'd like to say I'd do the same thing, I'm not sure if I actually would.

Jae Hwa died so that his father would be spared. His persecutors were more than aware of the fact, but they wouldn't have cared if they were "fulfilling their assigned duty" onto a child; as long as it _was_ done, that's all that mattered. I'm positive people were there as he got taken away. I'm certain even his father kept his mouth shut because "it is better to lie twice than to admit to a lie."

I had a friend called Jae Hwa, who died because people looked away.

Humans weren't made without eyes to see.

_Two minutes. _

The cries of Jae Hwa's distraught mother ring out through every night since his death. They haunt my thoughts almost as terribly as his half-smiling face does.

We do only as we are told, not because we know no better but because we close our ears to reasoning. Why should people question the words of the greatest man to ever grace our lands? Why would there be a problem with the non-stop worship and dedication he demands?

No. Why do we sing the anthems and not hear the words' true meaning? Why do we ignore the panicked cries of truth?

Humans weren't made without ears to listen.

_One minute. _

And we all hear the cries of a grieving parent, an orphaned child, a friendless citizen; it has become part of our daily routine. And it is so routine no one even cares anymore. There is a whole world outside of these borders we guard with our lives – a world where people _can_ feel sympathy, _do_ have compassion. Cold, unwhispering, unwavering beings we as a nation have become. This isn't how we were born, not how we're supposed to be. I'm sure of it.

Humans weren't made without hearts to feel.

_Midnight. Happy Birthday, Dear Hwarang. _

And as I raise the submachine gun to eye height in one swift, practiced motion and pull the hammer down with unsuppressed force, the same thought as always runs hopelessly through my head. I desperately want to scream it for the whole world to hear. The sound of a hundred bullets simultaneously rushing through the air shatters the silence. I guess I preferred the quiet. Jae Hwa's face breaks my clear vision.

Humans were made to live.

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**Oh my, what a sexy little review button. **


	2. Chapter 2

**:)**

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**II**

Lately it feels like mother has been deteriorating. Slowly, excruciatingly, piece by piece of her is falling away, and thanks to a number of circumstances outside of normal people's control it seems as if she thinks she deserves it.

I have a brother. Seven years my junior, he was born with mental disabilities. He is ten years of age and has the mental capacity of a three year old. In our Beloved Country, there is no room for runts. Handicapped babies are disposed of quickly and efficiently and as soon as possible, because Our Nation does not need those mere folds of flesh that hold us back. We have no thought for the less able, for what could they ever offer to us? Our country is deserving of the best, and no less. Our country is absolute, perfect, whole. We are a Pure Race.

And I? I revel in impurity. My brother is a hero to all that know him; a symbol of life in a soulless nation, a spark of hope for those who desperately need change and our little way of saying Fuck You, Dear Leader. So far our family has been able to keep his existence from the authorities – spare a number of close friends, no-one is even aware of him – and were this ever to get out, especially the fact that we have been hiding it for so long… that could well be the last anyone hears about us.

Mother of course, being mother, blames herself. When he was only a few weeks old and still almost totally unresponsive she wanted to get rid of little Junsu herself, and might have succeeded if it wasn't for father. She detests him for that… and I admire him. She is a conformist and couldn't stand to go against the law; I'm like my father. We would rather be caught than get rid of a blameless child. We would willingly die so the ones we love might have a good life. Junsu sits babbling in his chair, in his corner, smiling at familiar faces and in place of mother's passive acceptance, _we_ have _ambition_. No way are we content, not yet, but at the moment it's all we can do.

I arrive home and walk through the first door immediately. The faint stink of household neglect greets me almost nostalgically. "Is Father back?" I ask the living room. I take off my boots and jacket, and turn to my mother. She is, as always, sitting on the armchair near the room's only window. The bits of her soul falling down are almost palpable; I feel like flinching every time she moves, as if with a turn of the head she would crack and break completely. It's only a matter of time before her body follows her mind and completely deteriorates; already she seems to have shrunk every time I see her and she was always a small woman.

I didn't expect a response. Instead I turn to Junsu's chair. Here I _do_ expect a happy jabber and a huge smile, but I am greeted by an empty chair. I look back at mother.

"Where..? Is Father with Junsu?"

Mother starts to rock backwards and forwards, ever so slightly. The thin black wisps of hair escaping her hairband frame her face, falling into her eyes. I walk over to her. She flinches at this, and only rocks faster.

"Mother…"

She looks up and meets my gaze. The rare emotion in her eyes makes me start – anger, or fear, or sorrow, or all three. I remember a time when I felt safe being around her – I must have been a toddler. Now though, she's become even more of a burden than my brother. Her pessimism is the dead weight holding us down, anchoring us to the ground when we wish for the skies. Even her voice is indistinct and creaky and sounds like it has given up. "They are together."

I wait for her to continue, impatient. After becoming still, she carries on. "They are with the authorities somewhere. Since last night. That's all I know."

My heart actually skips a beat. "They found out?" The words come out as a single quick breath, an extract of panic. "H-how?!"

"Yes."

"_How?"_

Mother shrugs, and continues rocking back and forth, back and forth. She mumbles words as if in prayer, eyes closed and hands weakly clasped together. The act screams 'conformist' and it disgusts me. I am filled with a sudden rage.

"_He is your kid! _Why are you acting so _indifferent_?"

Of course, no change in her. She sways forward and stays there, eventually breathing, "I hope your father is okay. He never deserved any of this."

"And Junsu DID?" I explode. I would have hit the pathetic form before me were she not my mother. "I can't – I can't understand – I'm going to _find them_," I spit, looking for my boots, "and bring them _back_." I spurt out of the room, seeing bright, burning, bubbling red, one arm back in my jacket sleeve.

"Wait…" mother's slight rambling voice sounds. "You'll get yourself into trouble Hwarang… don't be angry… you've always made me proud to have you as… as a son-"

I turn slowly, and find her finally standing up, bent back slightly. "You have two sons." I stalk out of the room, out of the front door.

"Hwarang…" I hear her drawl. I continue my furious pacing, desperate to put as much space between me and my mother as possible. _Junsu, Father, Junsu_ --

"Father!" I had only gone a few paces, and almost didn't notice him walking slowly in the other direction. He looks up after a moment, and scrutinises my face. His eyes are still crinkled, but have the deepest sorrow upon them. His hair still as grey as it was before, but looks as though it has aged a lifetime. He is very much alone.

"Hwarang," he says finally. I shake at his voice – it sounds as if it belongs to a wavering old man. He looks away from my face, looks defeated, looks crushed. "Come home."

He continues to walk in the direction of our house. I have so many questions burning at my throat but can find neither nerve nor voice to ask them. Instead I blankly follow my father home. Mother is at the window, waiting with an expression that would usually make my gut squirm. But not now. We get through the front door. We sit down at the table we eat dinner at on the rare occasions we are all home. We are silent, for a time. On the surface it is as if this is just another dinner, and we are paying thanks to our Leader for providing us with food. Oh how I wish. My heart _thump-thump-thumps_ and I'm afraid father will tell me to shut it up and mother will make some tea to calm him down and father will yell that he doesn't like tea _for the hundredth time, are you deranged, woman?_ But then father speaks, in that same ghostly voice.

"We can view the body tomorrow. Us parents are also to be executed."


	3. III

**III**

Nobody speaks, because nobody is here. Encroaching, enclosing silence. I lie on my back in the darkness of the evening, just thinking. Remembering. Recalling the times when any kind of quiet would be punctured by Junsu's laughing. And times when Father still got enough money from his job to comfortably feed a family of four. Times when I didn't have to retch with hunger, and the electricity stayed on for more than fifteen minutes a day. When I had faith.

I wasn't always disillusioned with the Great Leader's warped stories. They're not marketed as an opinion, or as the ideas of one political party in which we had the freedom to not believe in. His word is truth. His word is for the best of all of us, and he has sacrificed so much for us. My mother would recite every poem or song in praise of him she could think of whenever possible. She would dust the portrait of him in our living room religiously, every morning, beaming with joy at the end of her task. When the local theatre was still open, before the electricity turned to shit, she would encourage us to go and see the latest propaganda films, shoving won into my hands.

I was fed the Leader's lies from the very day I was born. Of course I believed in it. What choice did I have?

My moment of clarity came with the news that two of the homeless orphans from our neighbourhood had died from starvation on the streets. I rushed outside to see, as did other children in our apartment building. But while they saw the two emaciated little boys on the road, grossly fascinated, my eyes were drawn to the huge poster on the wall behind them. Our Great Leader, his face a shining light, surrounded by plump children playing happily in a field. The only splash of colour in a ghastly town of grey. The Great Leader promised abundance, health, wealth, happiness. What we actually got were starved children who would be dragged away to be buried in a mass grave later on that day.

And despite being told my entire life that our Great Leader cares for us all, and is pained at the loss of all North Korean lives, I knew this wasn't right. I wanted to leave this place, because changing it would be impossible. I wanted to take my family to live somewhere where Junsu wouldn't have to be shut away, where Father didn't have to live with hatred and guilt, where Mother could laugh again.

It turned out that Father had the same dreams as I. We talked at length about the possibilities that might lie before us if we were to successfully make it out of North Korea – did people in China really have a bowl of rice three times a day? Could they actually go to the markets and buy exotic, strange fruit? Have the South Koreans – our brothers and sisters – truly developed a communications device that you could carry around in your pocket?

We researched as often as we could the safest ways of leaving. We managed to save a small amount of money. We could just never find the right time to do it.

But now he is dead. Father is dead, and Mother is dead, and Junsu is dead. And I am alone in the dark silence. I have a feeling they will come to take me away sooner or later. I am of tainted blood now. I am the last living member of the Baek family, and soon I will probably be slaving away in one of the prison camps until the day I breathe my final breath.

I'm not sure if I have the heart in me to get away anymore. That hope died with my Father. He knew the terrain, and he was the brains. I hated that all of his hard work finding out about various routes out of the country would go to waste. I wish I could complete the task my father never could, but without him and Junsu whatever future I have seems too bleak. This isn't something I can do without their support.

Mother dragged us down with her reverence for the system, but that was just because she was too weak, too dependent to do anything else. She could ignore the gnawing hunger in her stomach by convincing herself that her Dear Leader would get her through it. Mother had no clue.

Father always harboured anti-government feelings, but said nothing about them until he found the scrap of paper on which I wrote about my own. He burnt it – in case it fell into the wrong hands – but he discussed with me his own hopes. He wanted to defect. A childhood friend of his was now a guard posted at the Tumen River, beyond which is the border of Northeast China, and Father was sure he could be convinced to turn a blind eye to let our family past – with the help of a generous tip, of course. Father had it all mapped out.

Junsu was full of unconditional love. He wasn't much of a talker, but he understood more than we ever would. His eyes would glimmer with wonder when I'd tell him stories of the Chinese and the South Koreans. He loved the fact that, somewhere out there, people had their own cars and their own choices. I think he was happy - but I knew how much he wanted to be able to go outside and play. Go to school and make friends and sing songs. The regime deprived him of all that – and yet he was always the most optimistic of us all. Junsu was our purpose.

And now my world is upturned, the world is chaos. You, Junsu, the last glimmer of light in this godforsaken hell, have finally been put out. I can't see my life happening without you. I don't want a life without you.

But I think of the shit you went through when you were alive. The isolation, even by North Korean standards. The yearning to be free. The desire to be yourself. The need to _live_…

And there it was.

My second moment of clarity.

I have no reason to stay here anymore. Nothing is holding me back except my own hesitation.

Your death won't be in vain, little brother. I'm going to find the world I used to tell you stories about.


End file.
